As with any game there must be a goal. The single goal of this game is to leave the dungeon with the most gold. You can only leave the dungeon via the exit tile.
Back a few steps. If a character dies in the game, they respawn at the start point (with a bit lighter purse). Great idea, except if you are the first to leave the dungeon. All it was doing was rewarding those left with a target to keep running around until they achieved the desired amount. To combat this issue we introduced a rule allowing the exiting player to continue to play, drawing cards from the play deck, attacking characters with monsters ... still this did not resolve the distinct negative of exiting first. Though rewarding those who exit to continue was given all round approval.
Introducing permanent character death. This is where the game diverts from the pure eurogame ethos. We tried two senario's to combat the "keep looting till I have enough gold to win" mentality. Firstly we tried, as soon as a player exits, any further deaths would be permanent, this succeeded to some point, but the RPG DM in me wanted to take it a bit further. What if the dungeon could win? I changed the rule that permanent character death would happen as soon as the exit tile appeared. It did not change the game significantly overall, and we are yet to have the dungeon win.
All in all with what I consider an almost final game there is three distinct phases in the game, all requiring different strategies.
* General game play
* Post exit tile exposed
* Post exiting the game
All in all my current play testers are happy with the game, to the point they request to play it. All we need now is more play testing ...
Comments
Time-off counter
I've designed a Wolfenstein game some time ago. Players entered the castle to wreck havoc there and hopefully escape before everything blew into pieces. Maybe you can use a time-off event to draw your players into leaving the dungeon almost all at once. In my case, I used an player-action-onset time-off counter. So, when a player reached the core reactor and place a bomb there, everyone must clear the castle in five turns or die in the resulting fireball. Man, that was fun! Players jumped from the castle walls or directly run through the middle of an enemy guard post just to get out of there alive. Another player just started shooting one of his mates because he was running before him and he wasn't going to make it but the other guy could. It was mayhem and lots of fun.
Anyway, I think you could place your dungeon in the center of a volcano and when the first player leaves the dungeon (maybe through a magical portal or something) the place starts falling apart. Then all players must run for their lives or be crushed/burned to death (before X turns). Additionally, each player outside the dungeon may roll a dice to collapse a random room, meaning the number of rolls and the risk of staying inside would be increasing as more players leave the dungeon.
The everything-falls-apart ending is common in adventure movies. I think it will not be hard to adjust to your game.
Keep thinking!
Bank tile?
How about making it a "bank" tile as well as an exit? I.e. the player may choose to exit the dungeon or deposit the gold into the "bank" and perhaps miss a turn whilst doing so?
Hmm, I had not thought of
Hmm, I had not thought of banking gold, that could flip the game on its head if you made it the first person to exit ends the game.
Thanks for the input I will discuss it with some of my play testers.
alternatively to the "bank"
alternatively to the "bank" idea, make a shop that pays better the less treasure it has seen.
So each lot of treasure out to the Shop gets more of a bonus if its 1st, 2nd, 3rd in order.
Exiting first
I made a similar, if much simpler, game for kids once. The game was a 'straight through the caves'-nonsense with the only real goal to keep kids occupied for a while ;)
The board was filled with markers representing different amounts of gold and cave-ins, and you win by collecting the most gold and exiting. Since I wanted to stress the 'exiting' part there was a Gnome on the exit tile, who doubled the amount of gold you had if you paid him for it.
Usually, the first to exit won ;)